Age of consent, paedophilia, NAMBLA etc.

[nu2this]

So, I was rewatching one of the older South Park episodes (don't judge me) and couldn't help but do some research on NAMBLA; The North American Man/Boy Love Association.

This is basically an organization that questions the stigmatisation of paedophilia and argues that sexual relationships between adults and younger children can be harmless and even beneficial as long as there's mutual consent. They wish to undermine the notion that children and teenagers are incapable of making their own decisions and sexually liberate themselves.

I for one, believe that the general attitude towards paedophilia is very harmful. Much like none of us chose to be LGBT, I'm under the very firm impression that people who are attracted to prepubescent children are equally unable to choose or control their inclination. It's not all that unusual for citizens, especially in smaller towns, to react violently towards people they (sometimes falsely) suspect to be paedophiles. I remember, at one point I spotted a woman in my own town handing out papers accompanied by a picture of a man and a textual description of his criminal history which invlolved sexual child abuse, for which he was sentenced to many years in prison. Apparently he had moved to our town and she wanted to raise awareness. I asked her where she had gotten the information from, to which she replied "my sister heard of it from some of her friends". I was shocked by the way people trusted the paper with absolutely no reasonable evidence provided.

If you believe our attractions are beyond our control, it's obvious that there's nothing inherently wrong with being attracted to something criminal. Therefore it makes no sense to prosecute people of a certain inclination. Some urges, however, obviously can't be acted out upon, for the safety of others in mind. To me paedophilia is one of them. I'm very open for a debate in regards to age of consent laws, but I stand by the limit propagated by my own country, which is 15. The reason for this is that I simply don't believe children younger than that can be expected to make benevolent decisions and evaluate their different choices properly. Do you agree or disagree? Do you support NAMBLA's rights to advocate such taboo opinions and what's your take on paedophilia as a whole? No attacks in this thread please, I find this genuinely interesting to talk about!

It needs to be talked about, I feel that an adult can sometimes *impress* a younger child, and convince them to participate that the child might later regret, or aint mature enough to make the right decision yet